Physicists are about to make a huge announcement about Gravitational Waves this Thursday

Now, about 100 years after Einstein’s prediction
about gravitational waves or curves in space-time, caused by massive objects in
universe, the research is expected to end up with a successive result.
Scientists are about to announce that they have detected the ripples in the
fabric of space-time. A press conference has been arranged on this Thursday, 11th
February at 10:30am EST (2.30am on Friday AEDT).

Image Credit: Daniela Illing/Shutterstock.com

If the evidence of gravitational waves has been
discovered, it will mark a huge break-through in our concepts about how the universe
was initiated. Until now no one’s ever been able to detect them. That’s because
these are extremely difficult to detect. According to General Theory of
Relativity proposed by Einstein-a century ago, gravitational waves describe how
mass in the Universe affects the shape of space. Due to these gravitational
waves, the fabric of space-time around a massive object can become curved, and
this curviness can then ripple out elsewhere in space, like how seismic waves
propagate in Earth's crust.

To detect them, physicists created the Advanced
Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory or LIGO. This observatory
consists of detectors in Washington and Louisiana, directed to observe any
passing gravitational waves by evaluating the extremely small changes they produce
in two 4 kilometer long pipes. It is still difficult to observe them as they
are coming to us from the other side of universe and are extremely small,
nearly the billionth diameter of an atom.

On Thursday, it is considered that LIGO scientists
will announce the evidence of the existence gravitational waves, and these
waves were supposed to have originated from the merging of two huge black holes.

Professor of astrophysics at Oxford University, Pedro
Ferreira told “People are tremendously excited. The rumor is that it’s a big
signal, in other words, it’s unambiguous, and that is fantastic."